After being replaced earlier this week, the former puppeteer behind Kermit the Frog, Steve Whitmire is speaking out in a blog post about what really went down!

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On Wednesday, the puppeteer behind the voice of the famous Kermit The Frog for 27 years says that he was fired by Disney in the Muppet Pundit post. Steve wrote in the post that last October, he was told over a phone call that he would be replaced and that the famous Muppet would be recast. He later went on to assure fans that he would have never quit the role on his own.

“For me the Muppets are not just a job, or a career, or even a passion. They are a calling, an urgent, undeniable, impossible to resist way of life. This is my life’s work since I was 19 years old. I feel that I am at the top of my game, and I want all of you who love the Muppets to know that I would never consider abandoning Kermit or any of the others because to do so would be to forsake the assignment entrusted to me by Jim Henson, my friend and mentor, but even more, my hero.”

After Jim Henson’s death, Steve Whitmire took on the role of Kermit the Frog in 1990.